FOOD is a magnificent collaboration between Force Majeure and Belvoir St and was originally seen downstairs at Belvoir in 2012. The script has been devised by co director actor/playwright Steve Rodgers.(Warning there are at times lots of strong language) .The result is a glorious fusion of physical theatre, straight drama and dance.

Champion’s choreography includes everyday movement, and fragile, tender, intimate gestures incorporating orchestrated incidental movement in slow-mo: imagined vignettes; thoughts expressed, physically, aloud; gestures of tender, gentle touch the characters wish they could lavish on each other, if only it felt safe, permissible and possible to do so. Champion has gone for intense nuance rather than a theatrical-choreographic combination , yet she also features a small solo or interactive sequence in which the characters express their innermost authentic feelings, as they transcend the roles that they have been cast in.

Anna Tregloan has designed a fabulous set, – a steely galley kitchen with a long bench, with well-used pots, of differing sizes, which hang on the back wall like gongs, trophies or mirrors ( and at one point are used marvelously for Elma’s monologue). 

Martin Langthorne’s excellent atmospheric lighting gives the pots a coppery glow and hearth-like warmth onto which are also projected shifting reflective patterns, that invite us back into uneasy memories.

The lights rise on two women with the focus, at first, on one– who we eventually learn is Nancy (Emma Jackson) , the younger sister. She dances, with increasing wild sensuality, to club music she sings to herself. Suddenly, though, the freedom of her expression looks more like she’s being controlled, subjugated; raped. Or is it an epileptic fit? A nightmare? It’s a disturbing, rather violent vignette; an entrance unwillingly cracked open to a buried vault of suppressed memories.

The other, older woman Elma (Mel King ) comes into focus as she sets about her arduous kitchen duties, beginning with kneading bread and adding flour. Elma impatiently calls to Nancy who is still fantasizing and singing in the shower. Nancy daydreams of a life more exciting than the one she has and surrenders to the moment. United they fight against their past while intimately bickering with each other about planning their future.

Eventually we learn that, somewhere on a lonely stretch of highway in the middle of nowhere, Elma and Nancy operate a small takeaway cafe. Elma, the hardworking responsible one, has planted her feet firmly on the ground, putting down roots based on more than a few lies she’s repeatedly told herself about her family. Possibly to allow her sister and herself to move on and to provide them with a focus that distracts from shared history, Nancy encourages Elma to take the risky plunge from takeaway, dishing up chips and chiko rolls, to a posher restaurant ‘with Elma’s now famous fish pie.

They realise that they’re going to need help once the restaurant has been renovated and expanded and eventually along comes vain, self confident Turkish immigrant Hakan (Fayassal Bazzi) who has a dazzling smile. Hakan has a monologue introducing himself, and not least his love life, using a slideshow with one of the tablecloths as a projection screen.

Hakan grows to like the outgoing Nancy, whilst Elma abruptly silences his jokes, stories and singing. While Hakan settles in and learns the ropes the restaurant crowd slowly develops . There is a wonderful, joyous scene where the cast frantically hand out bread, wine and soup to the audience as ‘we’ represent the hugely growing crowd of customers. Achievement makes Elma glow and, with Nancy’s encouragement, Hakan seduces her with a tender one night stand after an exhausted drunken celebration.

Meanwhile, we also hear both horrifically vivid recollections of rape and other troubling relics of a shared ,shattered past through intense monologues by both sisters .Mentions are also made about a negligent mother and steely grandma. We see different facets of the same prism of life,through the eyes of the two women. And then Hakan mysteriously disappears on his travels again.

Mel King as Elma is instantly recognisable as the lonely stoic woman in the Outback , working hard to ignore the hidden , unacknowledged grief she feels for the lack of pleasure in her exhausting treadmill of a life. How she copes is just by keeping going. Emma Jackson’s Nancy is the younger ,rebellious ‘wild child’, who mysteriously vanished for two years , assuming the role assigned to her in the family pecking order. Bazzi is witty, funny and charming as smoothly charismatic motormouth Hakan; challenging and opening up worlds of discovery for the two women.

The play features a cyclical ending with Nancy starting the daily cooking and calling for Elma.

FOOD is a wonderful theatrical feast . Running time 90 mins (approx) no interval. FOOD played the Parramatta Riverside theatre between 1-5 July 2014.